Incept Out
by Anton Nimm
Summary: With nowhere left to run, Cobb and his crew offer to train a grown-up Riley Andersen to protect her mind from infiltration. But Riley's mind doesn't work like they thought it would, and a simple training mission turns out to be a lot more complicated. Can they escape Riley's mind and win her protection when they wake up? Other works here: /home/read/9133
1. Chapter 1

Incept Out

Being on the run for so long should have deadened his nerves to the feeling, yet Cobb could not help but feel nervous as he and his friends stepped into the andersen building. The young Riley Andersen had, before the age of thirty-five, built a computer hardware company that made IBM look like a garage sale. Rumors had flown as to how she accomplished this, as she was notoriously tight-lipped in interviews. Some said she had found a way to go without sleep entirely, or that her sheer ruthless drive had allowed her to build so much. Cobb did not care, as long as she was willing to use what she had built to help him. With her contacts and influence growing exponentially, Riley could easily provide Cobb with immunity from persecution. Riley Andersen was Dominic Cobb's last hope now.

There was no-one else who could offer protection from Cobol Engineering or the Fischer Group hunting him and his partners. After the young Robert Fischer had dismantled his father's company, a legion of disgruntled ex-employees and stockholders decided to root out just how Robert Fischer had suddenly decided to destroy his own inheritance over the course of one plane ride. It did not take much detective work to figure out who had been on the plane with Fischer, who had hired them, or what they had been doing given their skill set. The CEO of a major competitor could not buy out an airline without raising someone's suspicion.

The Fischer Group had hunted Cobb and his associates to the ends of the earth, with spies and assassins and mercenaries. If they could not force him to undo his damage, they could at least get their revenge. Eames and Yusuf had gone underground and vanished off the radar. Arthur had stuck with Cobb through these hard times out of friendship, while Ariadne had joined them on the run. She did not know what else to do.

Saito had refused to offer any more help. He had honored his arrangement, what more could he do? Only Riley Andersen, the hockey girl from San Francisco, seemed willing to take him under her wing in exchange for training in the world of corporate espionage. The job was easy enough. Train a newcomer CEO to defend her mind from Extractors and other corporate espionage, get security for himself, his friends, and his family. He would have to be insane to refuse.

Riley stood in a modern, high-tech lobby with sleek, minimalist furniture. She wore a black blouse and skirt with a white pleated shirt. Despite her ruthless reputation, she still seemed friendly and approachable. She retained her blue eyes, grew out her dirty blonde hair, and her round face looked harder and more mature.

"Mr. Cobb," she shook his hand. "Pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure's mine ma'am," Cobb smiled. That had become harder with his life on the run again.

"Now I've heard that you and your crew are the most skilled Extractors and Inceptors out there," Riley said. "I trust my boys to do their research. So just how much information can you steal from dreams?"

"See, these aren't ordinary dreams," Arthur said. "Extractors like us can infiltrate your mind and steal your most valuable secrets."

"And Inceptors? I've heard a lot about that, but I'm told not to worry about it," Riley said.

"See we're the only ones who've successfully accomplished Inception," Cobb said.

"Twice," Arthur added.

"I think I'd know if someone was trying to put notions in my head," Riley chuckled uneasily.

"If the Inception was a sloppy one," Ariadne said. "But a good Inception can plant an idea that will redefine you, and you would think it was yours. You could lose your deepest secrets, your sense of reality, even your free will. That's what these machines can do."

She opened up a briefcase to reveal the dream-sharing machine.

"We can protect you from that," Arthur said.

"If you protect us and our families from the people chasing us," Cobb said. "Do we have a deal?"

"Well I haven't had this issue with spying yet," Riley said.

"Do we have a deal?" Cobb thrust out his hand towards her.

"Closing the deal," Riley grinned. "I like it. I'll take you on and give you protection, _if_ this works out. All of this under one condition: you stay out of my personal and family matters."

"Ma'am it's not that simple," Arthur said. "If we're going to defend your memories, we need to know your mind as well as or better than you do. Any Extractor worth his contract is going to try to know you just as well."

"My husband and kids are all extractors then," Riley said.

"That's the right mindset, at least," Cobb said.

They went upstairs into Riley's office. Her name was stenciled in gold onto the front of her heavy wooden desk. Cobb, Arthur, and Ariadne sat in high-backed black leather seats while Riley went behind her desk. Cobb noticed she had two crossed hockey sticks mounted on the wall behind her.

"Here are your contracts, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork," Riley handed them packets of forms. "So how does this work?"

"We each put a needle in our arm and the sedative knocks us out," Arthur explained while jotting off signatures. "You also need to be wary of people who may try to drug you to access your dreams. Be glad we're doing this in a controlled setting where nothing can go wrong."

"Wait, needles?" Riley grimaced. "Never liked needles, not since I was ten."

"Some phobias never die," Ariadne said.

"No, it's just…when I was thirteen this dog chased after me for my pizza," Riley said. "And while it was grabbing for my pizza it bit my hand. My mom freaked out and rushed me to the hospital, and I guess the doctors freaked out because they gave me all these rabies shots in my belly. To this day, I still don't know whether or not I actually had rabies."

"See?" Cobb said. "It's easy opening up once you realize how important it is for what we do."

After signing and filing away their massive contracts, they each slipped in the needles and fell into a deep sleep. Arthur, Cobb, and Ariadne had spent weeks planning this session. They would all be in a café in Ariadne's dream, Riley wouldn't remember how she got there, then Cobb and Arthur would steal Riley's secrets while Ariadne distracted her with idle chatter. Then, Ariadne would begin to bend the dream's architecture to showcase what dreams could do, and if the projections did not expel them they would simply commit suicide. Once Riley understood just how much she could lose so easily, she would not pick anyone else to train her in mind security.

They started out in the café, just as they had planned, but right away they could see that something was not right. The people in the dream looked like amoebas with faces and limbs, each of them wearing outfits to look like café patrons. Where Riley was supposed to sit, there was instead a camera manned by more of the amoeba people. Looking even further, they realized their café was in fact a set piece in a gigantic studio somewhere.

"Ariadne," Cobb whispered. "This was not in the layout we'd agreed to. Was there supposed to be a studio?"

"No," Ariadne said. "Just a café with a hotel where Riley would store her secrets. I have no idea what the rest of this is."

"What kinds of projections are these?" Arthur said. "Where exactly are we now?"

"I don't know, but I've got a bad feeling about this already," Cobb said.

"Hey!" an amoeba with wavy hair and a beret barked. "Didn't you rehearse for this scene? Look at the camera and say 'Lovely weather today, Mrs. andersen?'. Oh cut, cut!"

The amoeba with the beret, who they guessed was the director, stepped off her chair and walked over to them.

"People, people, people," the director said. "Riley's dreams aren't just a bunch of pointless imagery. They are her muse, her source of inspiration in the waking world. We turn her life's events into imagination, and you will not mess that up by fudging your lines! Back into your places!"

"Now what?" Arthur whispered.

"Play along," Cobb said. "I don't think they realize we're not jellybean people. Let's convince them we're part of the dream, then get to the secrets in the hotel."

"There isn't a hotel anymore," Ariadne said. "Right there, where it's supposed to be on the corner, there's nothing but stage lights."

"Well that complicates things a bit," Cobb said. "Alright, let's find a way to get off this set as soon as-"

"Your lines are up!" the amoeba director said.

"Lovely weather we're having today?" Cobb said.

"Strange weather," Arthur said. "Tell me Riley, do you believe your secrets are safe?"

"What? No, no, no, no, no," the director said. "That wasn't at all in the script. This is supposed to be a mundane dream where you talk about the weather? How is Riley supposed to dream big ideas if she doesn't focus on the mundane? That's it, get 'em out of here. I want new actors on this set in five!"

"That's it, we're compromised," Arthur said.

"Let's get off the set and find that vault!" Cobb said as they scattered from the table.


	2. Chapter 2

"Intruder alert! Intruder alert!" said the disembodied voice as more amoeba-people poured onto the set.

Cobb and Ariadne raised their pistols and fired at the coming crowd of amoeba-things, but this didn't slow them down at all.

"Are these projections indestructible or something?" Arthur said.

"No, our guns are useless," Cobb shot at the ground to no effect. "We're shooting blanks. Just run for it!"

The café sat at a three-way intersection whose streets extended for several blocks before opening up into the set. More amoeba-things filled into the streets, these ones dressed like police officers and armed with batons. With one street cut off, the trio fled in the opposite direction, only to find themselves blocked off by a line of amoebas with riot shields and batons. They ran down the one remaining street, throwing down chairs and tables to slow their pursuers. They were just about to clear the buildings and escape into the studio floor when more amoeba-things tackled them from the sides.

Cobb, Arthur, and Ariadne went down in a flurry of fists, nightsticks, and rope that left them bruised and bound. They tried to struggle free, but the amoeba-things held them too tightly. They hoisted them up and carried them like logs out of the studio. They passed through a cavernous hall lined with giant, glossy posters for movies with titles like "I Have to Redo High School!", "My Kids Are Missing!", or "Always Running Late". These must be topics for other dreams, Cobb realized. Just what was this place? Ariadne could not have possibly designed this, unless as some kind of sick prank.

They kept going until they were out of the hallways, out of the buildings, crossing a vast, dark expanse of pebbly purple rock. The amoeba-cops carried them down a narrow pathway cut into the side of a cliff. None of them could look down, and they suspected it was best they didn't. Over to the side they could see an immense glowing golden-white tower shaped vaguely like the Seattle Needle. The tower seemingly floated above a bottomless void, with no possible structure to hold it up. The group lost sight of this as the amoeba-cops took them down to ground level and opened a gigantic set of doors.

"Alright, you trouble-makers," one of the cops said. "You're going into the subconscious until we can figure out just what to do with you."

They threw them into a dark cave and slammed the doors behind them. The trio wriggled free of their ropes and assessed their surroundings. The cave was pitch black but for random flashes of red and yellow light. There appeared to be mangrove-like trees of spiraled material growing from the cave floor, forming a dense forest that stretched as far as they could see, which admittedly was not very far.

"I don't suppose you know where we are?" Arthur said.

"That one projection…thing said we were in the subconscious, but this doesn't look anything like it," Ariadne said. "Subconscious is where the projections come from, but there are none here, and I don't think we're supposed to be able to access the subconscious through dreams. And why would my projections throw us down here instead of just killing us? None of this is making any sense!"

"I don't think we're just in your dream anymore," Cobb said.

"Maybe Riley's?" Arthur said. "She must be better-trained than we thought if she can pull people into her dream. This must be a trap. She set us up from the beginning!"

"I don't think we're even in a dream anymore," Cobb said. "We're in Riley's mind itself. This is a completely new set of rules we have to adapt to."

"Well we can't just shoot each other," Arthur said. "Guns are blank. I don't suppose we can find some blunt instrument and club each other to death?"

"No, no…" Cobb said. "We're not in a dream anymore. Dying won't wake us up and get us out of here. We'll have to think of something else."

"Well we won't accomplish anything down here," Ariadne said. "We need to get out of here."

"I packed some charges in case we needed to breach a heavy vault," Arthur said. "Maybe they could blow that big door."

They placed several satchels of plastic explosive at the bolts and base of the doors, plugged in the primers, and flipped the switch. The silence was deafening. Arthur cursed and kicked the dirt.

"Well now what?" he said. "It's like nothing works here."

"We'll have to look for another way out," Cobb said. "Maybe we can find some other exit in this cave."

"There might not be another exit, though," Ariadne said. "Just in case, we should mark our trail so we can find our way back."

"With what?" Arthur said.

"I brought these detonation cords in case the remote detonators didn't work," Ariadne pulled them out of her purse. "I gave us an unlimited supply since we were in the dream. We can tie them together and they'll lead us back through this maze."

They settled on the plan and set into the dark wilderness, tying together lines of det cord as they went. Cobb still expected to find the source of Riley's projections in her subconscious, but what they found was even worse. Every segment of the forest had its own nightmare. There was a gleaming surgical table with a row of needles, an angry square man in a business suit jabbing papers in their faces, a pair of little coffins lowering themselves into the ground.

"The sooner we get out of this place, the better," Cobb eyed the little coffins uneasily.

Among the horrors they found was a large black shape heaving against lurid red light from the ground. They cautiously approached the shape to find that it was a sleeping dog, but one the size of a school bus. Cobb and Arthur backed away slowly, but Ariadne looked the beast over.

"I'm thinking," Ariadne said. "If we can't blow open the door, what if we got this thing to break it down for us?"

"You want to wake that thing up and encourage it to chase us?" Arthur said.

"Sounds just insane enough to work," Cobb grinned. "Sometimes you've got to do things dangerously to do them right."

Cobb fired his blank gun several times, the shots cutting through the eerie silence. The dog stirred and rose, its black mass blotting out the red light until the trio was engulfed in darkness. Then it turned and lit up the room with its fiery red eyes. It's snarling mouth was lined with gleaming white fangs that dripped molten cheese and pepperoni.

"Piiiizzaaa," the dog growled. "Smell piiizzaaa…"

"Y-you want pizza boy?" Arthur stuttered. "Come-come on boy, with us now!"

"Pizza now!" the dog said.

The trio sprinted as fast as they could, following and tripping on their trail of det cord. The giant dog literally snapped at their heels the entire way, sickening them with its hot steamy breath of garlic and red sauce. When they made it to the door the dog skidded to a halt, eyeing them hungrily.

"Where pizza?" the dog said. "Must have pizza!"

"It's right outside that door," Cobb said. "Go on boy, get your well-earned pizza!"

"You not keep me from pizza!" the dog said.

The dog pawed furiously on the door, making deep scratches, before head-butting its way through and sniffing the fresh air.

"Smell pizzaaaaaa!" the dog howled.

"Alert! Alert! Escaped subconscious!" the amoeba cops yelled into their radios. "Get it back into containment before it wakes Riley up!"

"It's pizza time!" the dog said.

As more amoeba police showed up, Cobb, Arthur, and Ariadne crept up the narrow cliffside stairs to the plains.

"We need to get Riley's secrets," Cobb said. "It's the only way to prove we can do our job."

"Hey guys," Ariadne said. "It doesn't look like they're doing so well."

The pizza dog clambered up the cliff, amoeba police still clinging to its fur, and it charged head-on to the Dream Production Studios.

"Those guys said the dog would wake Riley up," Ariadne said. "Do you think they're right?"

"At this point, I don't know what to think," Cobb said. "Riley's dreams work nothing like the dreams we know. I want to think that a scary dream won't wake Riley up in the deep sleep we've got her in, but there's still a chance I could be wrong. We can't have Riley wake up while we're still here."

"I'll try to lure that dog away from Dream Production," Arthur said. "You keep those projection-thingies off my back. Hey!"

Arthur shouted to the dog, stopping it in its tracks.

"I've got pizza!" Arthur said. "Me! I've got it in my pocket!"

"Must have pizza!" the dog said.

It charged for Arthur, shrugging off the amoeba police as it did so. Arthur ran back to the Subconscious, wondering how he would lock the monster back up if the doors were smashed. Perhaps he could tie them together with det cord, or Riley's projections might help. But they could barely control this dog now, it was up to Arthur to handle this. He sped up as he ran for the cliff, glancing back to see the dog doing likewise. Perfect. Just when he was near the edge, he cut left and the dog skidded past him and off the cliff. He looked over to Cobb and Ariadne with a confident smirk when the dog's teeth snagged his ankle and dragged him off the edge.

"Arthur!" Ariadne cried as Arthur went over.

She ran to the cliffs but Cobb grabbed her.

"We have to keep moving," Cobb said.

"We can't just leave him, we have to get down there and help him!" Ariadne said.

"We won't accomplish anything if these projections recapture us," Cobb said. "Let's find a hiding place to lie low where we can figure this out."

"First we help him!" she said.

"He could be dead already, for all we know!" he threw her back. "We just don't know. But what we need right now is get a better idea of what we're up against before we end up like him."

"Hey, you guys are supposed to go back to Subconscious!" an amoeba cop said.

The pair sprinted across the plains, the amoeba-things in hot pursuit and radioing in more backup. Up ahead they saw a complex series of ridges cutting through the plains, but when they got closer they realized they were in fact much deeper. The ridges were in fact deep vertical trenches, far too deep to survive a fall. They leaped across trench after trench, the amoebas still after them, before Ariadne missed a ledge and fell. In the split second of hearing her scream, Cobb lost his footing on the landing and fell as well.


End file.
